another DB question and idea

[troubledAGAIN]

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=178487

The above link sort of discusses what I want to do but not exactly. I have an HP laptop that came with Windows Vista Home Premium. I wanted to install WinXP pro in a dual boot setup as the above link discusses. My copy of Vista is preinstalled so does not include the normal MS Vista instfull dvd, only a recovery disk. Vista will not allow the partition to be shrunk(is that a word?), and a restore of Vista with TI10 restores to the whole drive and does not let me partition as I want.

My Idea: I have an image of the current Vista installation and I have an image of a WinXP install that is from the same laptop. As everyone knows the Acronis TI boot disk is slow and does not have any partitioning tools so I was wondering about using a BartPE disk with the PE plugin for TI10 and partitioning utilities to perform the partitioning and restore operations. Of course I would have to restore the XP partition to the laptop and create the BartPE disk from XP. Then boot to the Bart disk, create partitions, restore images with the TI plugin. Then I should only have to edit the BCD for Vista to be able to dual boot.

Restoring Vista to the first partition should enable it to boot without issue but the XP partition would have to be added to the BCD, correct? Would I be able to use a boot manager to choose the OS I wanted to boot and hide the other partition?

Does this sound doable to anyone else?

Thanks in advance to any one who replies.
Phil